Alumni Stadium, May 22: Secretary Rice (top) and faculty objectors (standing, behind graduates). Photographs: Gary Wayne Gilbert

Commencement day, Monday, May 22, dawned cool and cloudy, but by midmorning the sky had cleared, and hawkers were selling five-dollar bunches of roses in front of St. Ignatius Church. Inside Alumni Stadium, wind whipped the maroon and gold flags and made low booming sounds as it blew across an open mike on the as-yet-unoccupied dais.

Suddenly, at 10:15, a white single-engine plane appeared in the sky and did a lazy turn above the stadium, towing a sign that read “Your War Brings Dishonor.”

After weeks of controversy that had spilled beyond campus into the national media, few in the stadium likely wondered whom the banner was addressing. Presumably the flyover had been timed to coincide with the arrival of the commencement speaker, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, but the ceremony was running well behind schedule owing to tight security, and Rice, along with most graduates, was nowhere to be seen. Before they could step onto the artificial playing surface, graduates and faculty were required to file through metal detectors manned by security guards from the State Department. Any bags were submitted to the scrutiny of a sniffer dog that, between examinations, chewed serenely on a plastic ball. In addition, according to BC’s Jim Lehane, executive assistant to the president, bomb squad police were in attendance should any explosives need defusing; sharpshooters had taken up positions at high points in the stadium; and security officers wearing academic robes accompanied Rice when she finally marched onto the field.

Even so, the graduates seemed happy and relaxed once they made it inside. Standing among the folding chairs that covered half the football field, while waiting for the ceremony to begin they adjusted their mortarboards and gowns, made visual or cell-phone contact with family in the stands, and chatted in the bright sun with reporters from Reuters, the Boston Globe, and local TV and radio stations concerning their feelings about Rice, the Iraq War, and plans by some students and faculty to engage in protest during the conferral of an honorary doctorate of laws on the secretary.

The wrangling over Rice’s commencement appearance had begun late in April, with a petition signed by 22 percent of BC’s 679 full-time tenure-track faculty. Authored by theology professors David Hollenbach, SJ, and Kenneth Himes, OFM, it expressed the petitioners’ unhappiness with BC’s plans to honor Rice, pointing out that the secretary had “helped develop and implement the strategic policies that have guided” the Iraq War, a conflict opposed “on ethical grounds” by the U.S. Catholic bishops and John Paul II.

A few days later, students posted a similar petition on PetitionSite.com, followed within hours by a counterpetition on the same website posted by another group of students. Unlike the first student petition, the counterpetition avoided mention of the war, supporting the decision to honor Rice, who grew up in segregated Birmingham, Alabama, on the grounds that she “exemplifies the American Dream” and that inviting her would illustrate BC’s “commitment to intellectual diversity.”

The dueling petitions were followed on May 8 by a 20-speaker rally against the Rice invitation on O’Neill Plaza, attended by about 150 students, faculty, and staff. News of the rally and petitions made headlines in both Boston dailies, both Washington dailies (“Boston faculty chafes at Rice rave,” needled a headline in the conservative Washington Times), the Chronicle of Higher Education, and Reuters wire copy. Calling Rice a liar for statements she had made leading up to the war, Steve Almond, an adjunct English professor, resigned from the University in a Boston Globe op-ed that quickly circulated through the blogosphere with accompanying postings, both praiseful and sneering. Sociology professor Juliet Schor and political science professor Marc Landy debated the commencement honor on Democracy Now, a nationally syndicated radio and TV show. And Schor’s department colleague Charles Derber appeared on Fox News’ O’Reilly Factor, where he invoked Jesuit values of “peace and justice” and host Bill O’Reilly countered, without further elaboration, that “to diminish [Rice] by saying she’s not worthy of a BC degree, I say to you, professor, is morally wrong.”

Long lines at security checkpoints gave students already on the field time to reach out. Photograph: Gary Wayne Gilbert

Coming at the end of weeks of noisy and sometimes bombastic debate, the commencement protest was a sedate, not to say anticlimactic, affair. So, by and large, was the secretary’s speech, which mentioned the Iraq War only once, in passing. When Rice stood to get her honorary degree, protesters, including about 50 scattered graduates and up to 200 faculty, stood silently and turned their backs; the faculty members had voluntarily taken chairs at one edge of the commencement gathering so that their protest wouldn’t interfere with the view of graduates or their guests. Many wore armbands reading “Not in My Name” and some held aloft small paper signs bearing the same slogan, a reference to the decision to honor Rice, said Reena Parikh ’06, who opposed the invitation. “The letter [Rice] received said, ‘The students and faculty cordially invite you,’ but we never were consulted,” Parikh said.

Another, louder protest took place outside the stadium—according to the Globe, it involved 200 students, alumni, and parents of military service members—but it was barely audible on the field.

Rice, who got her master’s at the University of Notre Dame and is known to follow football, began with some well-received jokes about the BC–Notre Dame athletic rivalry. In the main part of the speech, she enumerated five “responsibilities of educated people”: to find one’s passion; to “[commit] to reason”; to reject false pride; to be optimistic; and to work for human progress. In the “reason” category, she told graduates, to some applause, “When you’re absolutely sure that you are right, go find somebody who disagrees. Don’t allow yourself the easy course of the constant ‘Amen’ to everything that you say.”

In another applause line, she said, “Because individuals kept faith with the ideal of America, it seems that it was always inevitable that today there has been a decade since we last had a white male secretary of state.”

Under “optimism,” she admitted that in the face of “images of genocide in Darfur or violence in Iraq or destruction along our own Gulf Coast,” it was hard to believe in human progress, but she urged the graduates to “draw solace from education and also from historical perspective.”

In one of the few sections of the speech that could be read as political, Rice started by recalling her upbringing in the South, invoking images of abusive, racist sheriffs and the Ku Klux Klan. “I know how it feels to hold aspirations when half your neighbors think that you’re incapable or uninterested in anything higher,” she said. Then came words that some found rankling: “In my professional life, I’ve listened with disbelief as it was said that men and women in . . . the Middle East today did not share the basic aspirations of all human beings.”

“That’s the standard Bush position,” said David Hollenbach, the faculty petitioner, a day after commencement. “I don’t think anyone who disagrees with honoring Dr. Rice was disagreeing that Iraqis should have their human rights respected. The question is whether you accomplish that by going to war. The question is whether the well-being and human rights of people in Baghdad are in fact being secured in a situation that verges on anarchy today.”

Graduates’ reviews of Rice’s speech ranged from lukewarm to glowing, though it was hard to find any who would say they supported the war in Iraq or the Bush administration in general. The armband-wearing William Kozaites ’06 called the speech “all right,” but added, “I don’t trust what [Rice] says,” and Kitwa Ng ’06, who held up a sign during the silent protest, said, “I would have liked her speech coming from another person.” Eugene Watt ’06, who said he was “no fan of the Bush administration; in fact, I think it’s terrible,” nevertheless called Rice’s speech “one of the best . . . I’ve heard. She gave us some good motivational techniques and quotes.” The silent protest, in his view, was “a little disrespectful. It’s a graduation, not a [World Trade Organization] conference.” Brooke Queenan ’06, who called the speech “really good,” said, “I didn’t protest because I wasn’t expecting [Rice] to speak about foreign policy.” And covering all bases, Akim St. Omer ’06, said Rice “did well” but also declared himself “impressed with the restraint of the protesters and of those who weren’t protesting. A few people were shouting [at the protesters], ‘Sit down, sit down!’ but overall, it went very well.”

Also satisfied with the commencement day protest, as well as the overall response to the decision to honor Rice, was David Hollenbach. “We didn’t all agree with one another,” he said, but the protests and petitions fueled “more serious discussion of the war in Iraq than I’ve seen on this campus up to now, and probably more than has taken place on any campus.”

Jack Dunn, Boston College’s public affairs director, who had been charged with defending the Rice invitation in the media, sounded relieved the day after commencement, when he said, “Those faculty members who opposed Dr. Rice’s presence voiced their opinion. Dr. Rice was greeted with a rousing standing ovation. . . . Students and families were pleased that Dr. Rice was present, and all in all, it was a great day for Boston College.”

David Reich is a writer based in the Boston area.

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